An Empty Space
by jellybeanfactory
Summary: 1979. Seiji forgot, but Touma continues to remember.


Title: An Empty Space

Author: jellybeanfactory

Fandom: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers

Characters: Seiji, Touma

Rating: G

Summary: 1979. Seiji forgot, but Touma continues to remember.

Disclaimer: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers belongs to Hajime Yatate and Sunrise. I make no profit from this fanfic.

Warnings: none that I can see (feel free to correct me, though)

Notes: Written and finished for morphaileffect's birthday (Happy Birthday!), painstakingly beta'd by the wonderful Sei, all remaining mistakes are totally my fault. I also took some liberties regarding Seiji's and Touma's backgrounds.

* * *

The first time Touma met Seiji was in 1979, not 1987. He was sure of it. The young man's hair was still the same shade of gold as one of his early childhood medals, now an old memory stored safely in a dusty cabinet inside his attic.

Their eyes met. Touma didn't have to ask to know Seiji didn't remember him. But that was all right. He was used to remembering things about his childhood other boys no longer did when they got older.

* * *

Despite the many advantages enjoyed by a six-year-old boy with an IQ of 250 living in his own space, Touma didn't think they outweighed all the disadvantages that came with them. He was barely tolerated as it was, with his odd features and his mature speech -- his parents' divorce made him a pariah. Kids stayed a constant five feet radius away from him, though the braver ones tended to hang around the wire fence separating his house's front porch from the wide open playground, with its too-old swings and creaking jungle jims. They didn't do anything aggressive, but they talked. And they pointed. And constantly watched whenever Touma went out to sort the garbage or get the mail. Some of the adults were nicer, sparing "brave little Touma-kun" an extra treat or two while he shopped for his own groceries or bought his own plumbing tools from the hardware shop. But Touma sometimes caught wind of the nasty rumors they exchanged about his parents, and he never felt comfortable enough to linger.

It was on Garbage-Day-Thursday when he first spotted him, and Touma only glanced at the playground because he noticed the distinct lack of faces pressed against the wire fence. One little boy, about his age, sitting on a swing and pushing himself to and fro. The kid must have been tired, because the swing's arc remained short and uninspired.

He stared. He couldn't help it. He'd never seen hair like that on another boy, not in real life. Touma was instantly reminded of his Young Einstein Award sitting proudly beside his first microscope, with its polished surface and shiny gold plating.

Touma went back inside the house before the boy could notice he was being watched.

* * *

The day following Garbage-Day-Thursday was Bills-in-the-Post Day. Touma kept that day marked three times with a red marker on his calendar. Apart from the chilling thought of one whole month devoid of electricity, being late with the bills meant no special television channels. No special channels meant no late National Geographic features. And Sanrio cartoons, though his Dad kept telling him that will rot his brain.

He went outside at precisely 2 p.m. and waited for the postman. The day was hot, so he kept to the shaded steps near the front door. He glanced over to the playground and saw the same blond boy sitting on one of the swings, enthusiastically kicking himself aloft despite the overwhelming heat.

This time, the boy looked up and saw him. Touma watched him for a while and waved.

The kid waved back just as the postman knocked on his gate.

* * *

The day after Bills-in-the-Post Day was no particularly important day. All the bills were paid, all the house chores done, all the shopping finished, all his projects either stuck or on hold due to lack of data or materials.

It was on that day that Touma locked his house, closed the gate, and walked down the street to enter the playground right next door.

"Hi," he said, when he stopped in front of the seated child. He nervously rocked back on the balls of his feet.

"Hi..." the other boy began, but then trailed off. Probably because Touma was staring.

It wasn't the hair this time, although up close, it looked as if the boy's head was modeled after one of those fancy barbie dolls he saw at the supermarket. The boy's eyes were sharp, pale, and so very not Japanese-looking. Although wide-set and proportional, they looked a bit too clear and out of place, their stark quality in direct contrast to the softness of his face.

The other boy frowned and dropped his gaze, quickly keeping Touma from staring longer. He fixed his eyes on the ground under his feet.

"I like your eyes," Touma blurted.

It was the truth, but it must also have been the right thing to say. The boy looked up at him again.

He didn't say anything in response, however. Touma keenly felt that the awkward silence which followed was still somehow his fault. "It's not very common here, having yellow hair and eyes like that," he said conversationally.

"Your hair's blue," the boy said, his accusing gaze sweeping over Touma's head.

"I know." He grinned. "I'm not common here, either. The people in this area, they don't like weird hair much."

"I saw." There was a pause while the boy seemed to arrive at a decision. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Seiji."

Touma shook the proffered hand, noting the wan grip and the sweaty palm. "Touma. I live over there." He pointed to the direction of his house. It looked tall and imposing through the strong wire fence.

"Saw that, too." Seiji kicked himself off the ground again, spraying loose dirt across Touma's slippered feet. "Wanna swing?"

* * *

So Touma swung for a few hours daily, for the next five days. He'd been on a swing before, of course, but that was three years ago when his mother was still motherly enough to hang around the house and push him. Not that the mechanics eluded Touma. But Seiji seemed to know other fun ways to use the contraption -- he taught Touma how to swing while standing up, how to swing while seated backwards, how to wiggle the seat while it moved so that it felt like the earth was shaking under his feet. He taught him how to twist the metal seat clockwise over and over until the chains were wound dangerously tight, and then just let go and let the swing whirl him around. Touma liked that one most of all. He imagined that was what skydiving probably felt like.

When Touma wanted to do it again, Seiji was grinning cheekily and seemed about to agree, but couldn't say it aloud. He was breathing hard.

"I just," the boy said, swallowing hard and wiping sweat from his upper lip, "I just need a sec."

Seiji was sick, Touma learned. It was why his family was staying there for a few weeks -- his mother was talking to doctors in that big hospital about taking something out of him again so that he wouldn't be so sick anymore. His grandfather, meanwhile, was taking care of him at the hotel while his mom and dad sought out specialists around the city.

"I just get really tired sometimes and I need to stop and breathe," Seiji assured him when Touma looked worried. "We can swing again in a bit."

Touma asked what the symptoms were. After having him explain what "symptoms" meant, Seiji recounted what he could remember -- when he was younger, he often had high fever, vomited a lot, and his mom said he was amimik ("Anemic," Touma corrected. "Huh?" Seiji asked. Touma snickered. "Nevermind. What else?"). There were other things, but he couldn't remember them all. But some doctors took something out of him and he got all better.

"But it came back?" Touma inquired, realizing for the first time that the eerie paleness of Seiji's skin and lips might not have been natural.

"Yeah. Mother said they have to take something else out, but they need to find really good doctors first so they don't mess it up."

Touma nodded. "If your mom's here to see doctors from the Osaka University Hospital, then you shouldn't worry. They're really good."

"I guess." Seiji didn't look too reassured.

Touma bit his lower lip. Swinging was fun, but he didn't want the other boy to collapse on him. "You really shouldn't be swinging when you're sick," he muttered, when Seiji began to half-heartedly sway his legs above ground.

That earned him a scowl. "You sound like my grandfather."

Ouch. "Look," Touma said, reaching for a compromise, "I have tons of toys in my house. It's cooler there too, why don't we move? It's just over there, see?" He pointed at the house behind the wire fence. "It'll just be us two."

Seiji looked extremely tempted for a grand total of five seconds. "Grandfather let me play on the swings 'cause I promised not to move from here," he mournfully confessed.

"Oh." Touma scratched his head. "Wait here, then. I'll bring them over."

* * *

Standing at the door that led to both his mini-lab and his bedroom, Touma was immediately struck with the realization that he had absolutely no idea what other boys his age liked to play with. He opened closets and drawers and began to rummage through the toys he had dabbled in when he was four. He settled on a few untouched plastic model sets. The glue that came with them was non-toxic and child-friendly, and there weren't any sharp edges around the tiny parts waiting to be assembled. Although Seiji looked smart enough not to cut himself, Touma didn't want to take any chances.

He dumped the boxes into a plastic bag and dragged it behind him. Before he left, he made a brief stop in front of his father's modest collection of medical journals.

* * *

Seiji picked the plastic model of a JA-37 Viggen fighter jet. Touma thought it was a boring piece of crap. Seiji seemed to really like it though, so he kept his mouth shut.

Fears that the other boy would find the job of assembling a detailed replica of a war machine to be mind-numbingly boring were assuaged once Seiji got the hang of removing the tiny pieces and following the written instructions with his glue-smudged fingers. He'd had to ask for Touma's help a few times since some of the more detailed instructions eluded him, and Touma found himself having more fun guiding Seiji than working on his own plastic model (a proud little F-15 Eagle). Hours passed without their awareness. Later, two wings and a tiny recreation of a 30mm cannon lay assembled among the sea of scraps and parts still waiting to be glued together.

"I'll just throw these away," Touma said while he gathered up all the unneeded plastics.

"Will it fly when it's done?" Seiji asked. He poked one frail wing and watched it sway on its side.

Touma was about to say no, but he glanced at the schematics again and saw there was just enough space in the hollowed-out hull for _maybe_ a simple rotor. He could make one easily enough, but making one for something so tiny was another matter. "Maybe. We'll have to finish it and see."

The nearest garbage can was something of a walk from the middle of the playground. He hauled the armful of paper and plastic into the black canister then wiped his palms on his shirt, wincing a little as he felt hardened smudges of glue along the surface. Washing those off could get a little tricky. He turned around to return to where Seiji was waiting, but the way back was suddenly blocked with six feet of old man looking down at him with a raised eyebrow.

Touma was under the most disturbing impression that this man knew every single lie he'd told since he was two, and he was being actively judged for all of them.

"Young man," the old man said, and Touma knew that term had just been a courtesy, "have you seen a boy around here with blond hair?"

Touma was highly tempted to say "No, but I think I saw one in that other playground in that other city far away from here," but before he could even open his mouth, Seiji had called out a loud "I'm here!" and began to run toward them.

Seiji's presence seemed to have an adverse effect on the old man. His frown deepened, a scowl dragged across his lips, and he quickly barked "Don't run, Seiji!" as a means of greeting.

Touma winced at the harsh, commanding voice. It sounded like a whiplash in the silence of the empty playground.

Seiji didn't seem to mind. Touma was relieved when he at least slowed his pace. He was out of breath by the time he reached them. "Here, Touma," he said between pants, carefully unloading the unfinished fighter jet unto Touma's waiting arms. "Thanks for playing with me again today."

"I had fun," Touma uncertainly replied. He glanced nervously up at the old man, who quickly appropriated Seiji's shoulder with a firm grip.

"This is my grandfather," Seiji said, with a fond look at the aforementioned relative.

It was a while before the old man replied. His gaze lingered on Seiji, as if checking to see if the boy had overexerted himself. Eventually, his focus shifted to Touma, who found it extremely hard not to fidget under the authoritative gaze. "I apologize for my lack of manners. I haven't introduced myself," Seiji's grandfather said. His voice dripped with civility. "My name is Date Kazuma. You seem to know my grandson."

"He's my friend," Touma said, and meant every word. He hesitated before adding a hesitant, "Sir."

Seiji beamed at him.

"I see." Date Kazuma looked unimpressed. "He has orders to meet me at the entrance at precisely six. It is fifteen past six."

"It was my fault," Touma quickly explained. "I was showing him how to make something, and we lost track of time."

He nodded in a way that gave Touma the impression he'd suspected as much. "Kindly see that it doesn't happen again." He gave Seiji a little shake. "Seiji, say your farewells."

"Bye, Touma. Let's finish it tomorrow, okay?"

"'Kay. Bye," Touma said, and could do little more than wave as the grandfather began to steadily guide Seiji out of the playground.

* * *

Meeting Godfather Gramps did little to sway Touma from waiting patiently at the swings the next day. He'd gone ahead and organized the remaining parts of the unfinished fighter jet on the ground so Seiji wouldn't get lost with the labels later. Then he sat on his swing and chewed on a piece of tootsie roll while he sketched a rough schema of a miniature functional rotor on his sketchpad.

Seiji arrived moments later, looking tired but still rather excited. They exchanged greetings and he quickly settled down in front of the model and began squirting out glue on a clean tray of plastic.

His hands caught Touma's attention. "What's that?" he asked, pointing with his pencil at the bright red marks on the back of the other boy's palms. He mentally went through what he read from his father's medical journals and couldn't remember "bruising" among the list of symptoms.

"Hm? Oh." The red marks were given a dismissive, cursory glance before Seiji returned to picking up plastic pieces and scanning the instructions. "That's nothing. I was running too fast in the hotel we're staying at and I broke a statue."

"Must have been a heavy statue."

Seiji looked confused. Realization dawned on him a second later. "No, no -- my grandfather got mad and gave me five lashes."

Touma stopped sketching and looked at Seiji over his sketchpad. "Your grandfather hits you?"

"Not very hard, and only when I do something bad." Seiji was about to glue two pieces together when he caught sight of Touma's expression. He gave Touma a puzzled glance of his own. "Don't your parents punish you when you've done something you shouldn't?"

Touma thought of his mom's passport, his father's voice over the phone, and his big house with the spare key under the cracked pot of roses. "My parents kind of just leave me alone a lot."

He scuffed his foot across the loose dirt below the swing, sketchpad momentarily forgotten. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned that. He could almost hear the distant whispers that followed whenever he bought his own groceries from the local convenience store, and the hushed gossip of the kids who looked through the wire fence in front of his house. Nameless faces who watched him with expressions similar to the one he wore when he saw that limping lion at the zoo.

Seiji had been quiet for some time now. Touma began to rack his brain for a suitably distracting topic that another boy might find interesting. He was about to settle for baseball and maybe war tanks or that sentai program he saw a week ago when he heard Seiji say, "Wow."

Touma looked at him. He wasn't sure if he'd heard right. "'Wow'?"

"Yeah." Seiji gave him a slow, awed smile. "That's kind of cool."

* * *

"So do you like, wash your clothes and do the dishes?"

"Yeah."

"What about when something needs to get paid and stuff?"

Touma shrugged. "I do that, too."

"Aaw." Seiji flicked a stray rock away from the surface of the schematics. "My mom won't even let me pay the ice cream man."

That was just sad. Touma ribbed Seiji before saying, "Wanna help me pay the Water Guy when he drops by later today?"

Seiji immediately looked crestfallen. "I can't."

Right. His grandfather. Touma sighed. "It's just a short walk from here. And your grandfather doesn't have to know."

"I promised, though."

"Yeah, but you promised without knowing about the cool house with all the cool stuff in it and the nice boy who wants to show them to you. We don't even have to stay there long -- ten minutes, tops."

"I can't, Touma."

Something in Seiji's voice told Touma not to push. He mournfully thought of his self-replicating visual experiment and the almost-done-but-not-quite intuitive robot gerbil he'd just finished programming the night before. "Well," he said, feeling almost as disappointed as Seiji looked, "if you change your mind."

* * *

Four weeks after they first met, Touma waited for five hours at the swings.

It was 6:30 in the evening, but he didn't want to move. Seiji didn't know his phone number, so there was little point in staying in the house if all he wanted to find out was whether or not his friend was all right. He mentally berated himself for not asking after Seiji's number or address -- he'd mentioned a hotel, but which one? There were so many in Osaka. He hadn't looked particularly worse or better the day before -- maybe a little sluggish, but he usually was in the heat.

His hands gripped Seiji's proudly completed fighter jet, now fully equipped with a remote-controlled rotor and a basic surface sensor. That last bit had been difficult to add, and his father's messy notes didn't really help. But he'd found a way, eventually. He idly flicked the functional propeller and wondered, for the tenth time, if any nearby hospitals had recently admitted a blond six-year-old kid with a history of hepatoblastoma.

"Seiji isn't coming today."

He scrambled to sit up straighter on his swing. He hadn't been aware that he'd slumped so low on it during his wait. Carefully, he laid the frail airplane on Seiji's swing before looking up into Grandfather Date's stern face and hoping he at least looked more presentable than he felt. "Sir?"

"He is fighting a fever. It is not severe, but he's on strict bed rest for today until it breaks." His mouth formed a little disapproving grimace. "He refused to sleep until you were told that he couldn't make it today."

"Thank you for telling me," Touma politely said. The grandfather nodded, and turned to leave, but Touma quickly stood and grabbed the jet and its remote from the neighboring swing. "Sir, can you-- will you please give this to him?"

The old man looked at the little toy, then at Touma. Touma couldn't read his expression. "He will come again when he is able. You may hand it to him then."

Touma drew the small toy back to himself and nodded.

* * *

The first thing Touma did when he saw Seiji again three days later was ask for his phone number. Neither boy had thought to bring paper, so they just wrote each other's numbers on their arms with a thick, black marker.

Serious matters were hastily discarded in the face of their finished toy. It was then that Touma learned that although Seiji wasn't as smart as he was, he wasn't exactly dumb.

"That wasn't in the pictures," Seiji said, while pointing at two wires jutting out from beneath the plane.

"Are you sure?" Touma countered, all wide-eyed and innocent. "'Cause I think I saw something like that while you were making it..."

Seiji gave him a look. It was a look that was borne from the few times Touma had successfully duped him into believing something that wasn't true.

Touma didn't think of himself as a liar per se, but when confronted with Seiji's brutal honesty, he felt like a right cad sometimes. "Fine, I _may_ have added a thing or two. Just for design and stuff, you know, it's still completely yours--"

"You made it so it can fly, didn't you?" Seiji interrupted. He was busy tilting the plane to and fro, admiring it from different angles, though particularly that little patch of metal welded shut at the base. "You're really great, Touma."

The awe-filled voice warmed Touma's heart. He scratched the back of his head. "And not bump into stuff so it doesn't break."

Seiji was beside himself while the crude little toy flew (waggled, really) in the air and swerved away from branches and electric wires of its own volition. Every time it successfully veered sideways from crashing into a post, he'd give Touma this glance that got him all embarrassed and wishing Seiji would stop laughing at how red his face got.

As he watched the little blond boy steer the fighter jet with great care, Touma was reminded of the many scientists who clapped and fawned over his little inventions and thought it was probably a little odd of him to greatly prefer this.

He did feel guilty that something so simple was making Seiji all bouncy with glee. Imagine how he'd react when Touma finally got to show him Bob the Bug Buster.

The loud thump-thump-thump of tiny propellers winding down heralded the little jet's descent. Touma asked what was wrong -- it had barely been three minutes. Seiji couldn't possibly be tired of playing with it yet.

"I break stuff, even when I don't mean to," Seiji began to explain while he carefully picked the fighter jet off the ground and cradled it in his arms. "I don't want this one to break. Grandfather has this _big_ glass cabinet at home that he keeps swords and helmets in, and he gave me one whole shelf at the bottom." Seiji squatted on the ground and used a free palm to indicate a height of about one foot. "He said I could put stuff that was really, really important to me in there. I'm going to put this in the middle."

There was that look again. Touma wasn't really sure what to say. "Thanks," seemed a bit too self-serving, while "you should probably put it on the side and arrange your things chronologically" made sense but was probably inappropriate.

He just decided on: "That's nice of him. What other stuff have you put in there?"

Seiji shrugged. "Nothing yet. This'll be the first." He pushed the jet and its remote at Touma. "I can't keep this at the hotel, Grandfather will get mad. Can you keep it 'til I can put it in the cabinet after the surgery?"

Touma took the plane and smiled back. "Sure."

* * *

"The doctors said I could have the surgery soon."

Touma looked up at the odd non sequitur. His little baseball bat-wielding action figure remained frozen mid-flight, about to lay waste to a group of tiny female ninjas cleverly disguised as pink waitresses with little aprons (Seiji thankfully didn't ask why he even possessed tiny pink waitress dolls, and Touma wasn't about to volunteer that information). After the fighter jet, they'd been at a loss on what to do next while rummaging through the other toys Touma had painstakingly hauled out of his house. Seiji had spotted the old action figures scattered near the bottom and jumped on them.

Touma had never really understood the appeal of role-playing with stiff, immobile toys -- there was far more entertainment value in watching blinking little pixels on his computer monitor merge into people that you could actually order around. But Seiji began to enthusiastically weave this story about a group of samurai generals with evil girl ninja henchmen who wanted to take over the small Lego model of a drive-thru McDonalds and poison all the people who came there to eat. Then he presented Joe Mcbatty, a brilliant science student at night and baseball champion by day who was working part-time at the friers to pay for his tuition, and Touma was hooked.

Seiji had been happy enough to be Ronny Ronin, the evil mastermind, who had an arsenal of little ploys that Joe steadily saw through and crushed under his heel (he also briefly played Dindin, Joe's trusted sidekick, but he recently met his demise and now Joe was out for revenge).

Ronny Ronin was currently being idly drilled head-first into the ground, so Touma laid Joe Mcbatty aside for a while. "That's good, right? You won't be sick anymore."

It took Seiji a while to reply. "Do you think it'll hurt?"

"Nah. They'll give you medicine that'll make you sleep while they do the surgery." Seiji's expression remained downcast. "You won't feel a thing, promise."

"I asked...I asked if you could come. You know, be there with the doctors so you can tell them if they're doing things wrong. I told Mother how smart you are, but I don't think she believed me."

Touma tried and failed to keep from feeling too flattered. "Seiji, I don't know that much about what's hurting you. These doctors do, and they're really expensive so they'll be trying their best to do their jobs right." He scratched his cheek while he considered. "If your grandfather's okay with it, I can maybe wait outside the operating room with your family--"

Seiji's despondent voice interrupted him, "I asked that, too. They said no."

"What?" Touma frowned, feeling something hard lodge inside his chest. "Did they say why?"

Seiji said nothing and kept his eyes on the ground. Touma felt something twist inside him. Distantly, he remembered how the mother of a cute little girl he'd been teaching how to operate the gumball machine drew her child away from him and quickly walked away. "Seiji?"

"It's six. I have to go."

Touma watched as Seiji carefully replaced all the figurines and the large Lego model in the plastic bag. That done, he stood, dusting his hands off on his shorts. Touma didn't think he could move from his spot even if he wanted to -- his feet felt like lead.

He felt a little surreal while listening to Seiji's footsteps fading in the distance. He wondered why the footsteps sounded louder again when he felt thin arms wrapping around his back.

"I wish we'd been brothers."

Touma buried his face against the other boy's shoulder. So did he.

* * *

In hindsight, he probably should have been more suspicious when Seiji showed up the next day, bright-eyed and red-faced. But the boy had greeted him with "Tag! You're it!", and the next hour was spent running circles around the slides and hiding behind bushes and trees.

Touma quickly put a stop to the game when Seiji started breathing heavily and almost tripped over his own feet. They sat under the shade of a tree and leaned their backs against each other to catch their breaths, not minding the mixture of heat and the sweat emanating from their pressed bodies.

Moments after Touma was completely rested, Seiji was still gulping in air. Touma rose to his feet, his slow movements warning the other boy so Seiji could shift his weight and not fall over on his back. "I'll get us some cold fizzies. Don't worry, I won't get the same flavors as last time."

He'd grabbed apple cinnamon for himself and blueberry strawberry for Seiji, who was quick to express his displeasure of the berry flavor and scrunched up his face at the apple cinnamon when Touma offered to switch. It wouldn't be much of a problem if the beverage didn't sport such a wide and confusing array of combinations (all of which Touma had in the lab freezer -- the kiddie drink was something of a guilty pleasure), and apparently, Seiji's repertoire of flavors was limited to vanilla and chocolate -- neither of which was among the list.

Touma sighed, wondering if Seiji would prefer something more mild or more tart this time. "You know," he said, with no small amount of frustration, "if you came with me, you could show me which flavor you like."

"Okay."

Touma blinked. He looked back at the boy still sitting innocently on the ground. "You're coming back with me to my house?"

"Yeah, let's go." Seiji rose from the ground, making sure to wipe his sweaty palms on his shirt first before he grabbed Touma's hand.

_But what about Godfather Gramps?_ sat unspoken at the tip of Touma's tongue. He gave Seiji a cursory glance, but the other boy was just looking expectantly at him. As if he hadn't been avoiding going to Touma's house for the past six weeks.

Touma snapped out of his thoughts when Seiji began walking ahead and tugging on his hand. "If you don't start moving, I'll race you," he said with a cheeky grin, knowing full well that Touma would have a conniption if he kept exerting himself in his current condition.

_Sneaky little jerk,_ Touma thought with fondness, and let himself be led to his own house.

* * *

"Why'd you put this here?"

"Hm?"

Touma turned from where he was looking for Bob the Bug Buster and found a very put out Seiji with one hand holding a mostly empty pineapple kiwi fizzy and the other pointing at one of the occupied coffee tables.

He froze. No wonder Seiji sounded angry. There on the table precariously sat their precious JA-37 Viggen and its remote, the jet's wheels sitting dangerously close to the edge. One millimeter more, and the weight of the rotor and the main propeller would have dragged it to its death.

"What?" Touma weakly said, knowing full well he was in trouble. "It's a clean surface." Relatively. If you didn't count the milk stain, but that was weeks old anyway.

Truth be told, Touma had placed it there fully intending to put it somewhere safer after he was done sweeping the lab, but a work-in-progress theorem caught his eye and it wasn't until three hours later that he fell asleep on the lab table, plane untouched and sweeping forgotten. _Distraction, thy name is theoretical physics._

Seiji had a deep groove between his eyebrows while he set his drink on the floor and carefully rescued the jet from its imminent demise. "I'm gonna put it in my glass cabinet, and you're just keeping it on a messy table!"

"'M sorry," Touma mumbled apologetically. He frantically looked around for a better venue. "Here," he urged, while walking over to the fireplace. "Let's put it on the mantel."

Seiji walked over to where Touma was standing and quietly inspected the area. After finding it suitable, he gave a curt nod and reached up to place it beside the right-most candelabra. "Don't forget, okay?" he said, while standing on tip-toes and cautiously nudging the toy farther in with his fingers.

The mantel was wide and rather spacious, and if Touma ever really had a "glass cabinet" of his own, he supposed this would be it. He wiped that thing everyday and made sure the pictures of his mom and dad were beside each other and dirt-free. At the right of his dad's smiling face was his first scholarship acceptance letter, and at the left of his mom's picture was the collar of his first and only pet dog, Derrida. A picture of himself sleeping with the puppy was still in his wallet. He wondered if he should frame it and add it to the collection.

"Your parents look really nice," Seiji commented. He stared at the frames after he was satisfied with the jet's security.

"They're divorced."

A brief silence followed. Touma curiously watched while Seiji fidgeted. "I don't know what that means," came the embarrassed confession.

Touma smiled. "It means they're not married anymore."

"Is that why you got to keep this big house all to yourself?" Seiji asked, wide-eyed and envious.

"Yeah. Kind of." Touma wondered if Seiji had already realized that his "kind of"s actually meant "not really, but it's too complicated to explain," but with the way the other boy just trustingly nodded, he supposed not.

"Cool," Seiji said, with that tell-tale hint of awe in his voice. He looked around the large living room with the many books and the many hallways and Touma could tell he was envisioning himself living alone in a place like this, with no parents, no grandfather, and no rules.

Touma tried very hard to keep himself from envisioning Seiji living here as well.

* * *

He had a stitch in his side. Touma couldn't remember ever laughing so hard that pain bloomed fresh and unfamiliar below his left rib.

They had discovered -- purely by accident -- that Bob the Bug Buster's tiny little internal incinerator (helpfully dubbed "The Death Chamber") was also a very convenient and unintentionally hilarious popcorn dispenser. After a brief demonstration of the robot's functions (during which Seiji kept asking for encores, but there were simply not enough bugs in the room), the two had entered something of a half-hearted food fight, tossing tiny gummy bears and candies across the table at each other and trying to catch the airborne treats with their open mouths. An ill-thrown kernel somehow landed in Bob's funnel, and out flew a single piece of hot, well-cooked popcorn, preceded by a loud "pop!" emanating from the tiny chamber. A second of realization was shared by the two boys prior to both of them making a grab for the robot at the same time.

Seiji won on sheer proximity. He fed Bob a handful of ammunition, and Touma was soon continuously pelted with his favorite movie snack. He dispensed with the niceties and simply attacked Seiji directly with a can of whipped cream, and the situation had steadily devolved from there.

Now both boys were reduced to writhing beside each other on the floor, each under the mercy of giggling fits. Touma was steadfastly not looking at Seiji's face, because the boy was completely unaware of the half-chewed gummy bear stuck on his cream-ladened cheek, and seeing it just sent Touma whirling back into full laughter. He made a stronger effort to calm himself, though -- his laughter was setting off Seiji's fits as well, and the poor boy was struggling for breath as it was.

The loud beep of one of his alarm clocks sobered him right up, however. His laughter quickly dimmed and completely vanished as he recalled which sound that was -- it marked the start of his favorite NatGeo program about the most recent revelations in outer space exploration.

It was 9 p.m.

He'd been aware of the late hour for some time now. But whenever he remembered, he'd glance at Seiji and feel the other boy knew it too, but was choosing to ignore it. There was a desperate quality in the way he didn't look at the wall clock or glance outside the windows. He may as well have whispered to Touma, _"Please don't mention the time."_

Both boys were breathing normally now. Touma felt a small hand brush against his own. His skin tingled.

"Touma," he heard Seiji say in a small, conspiratorial voice.

"Hm?"

"I don't want to get the surgery."

Touma took a few seconds to organize his thoughts. "Why not?" he eventually asked, forcing his tone to be light. "It'll make you better."

"Maybe I don't want to get better."

"Don't say that," he said, perhaps a bit more forcefully than he should have. When Seiji said nothing further, he sighed, and asked in a calmer voice, "Well, why don't you want to get better?"

"It's just so hard, back at home." Touma glanced over and saw Seiji biting his lower lip. He recalled the brief tales the other boy would casually throw out sometimes about training, schedules, expectations, and _punishments_, and although Touma didn't fully understand, he felt he knew enough to be appropriately appalled with the way Seiji's life was being run by the adults around him.

Seiji edged a little closer. Touma could feel the inadvertent brush of his long blond hair across his own cheek. "I wish I could just stay here with you," Seiji whispered. His voice sounded small and heartbroken. It reminded Touma of when he'd been two, and his father had the unenviable task of explaining to an overeager child why he wasn't allowed to go up into the sky and touch the stars.

He closed his eyes. "I can make us a bunker," he said at length, when he was sure he had full control of his voice. He almost smiled when he heard Seiji's stifled snort. "I can! You've seen me make stuff, right? It'll just take a few days of stocking up and making sure we can keep breathing and stuff. Then we don't have to go out again 'til we're eighteen and we can get our drivers' licenses."

Seiji mulled this over for a moment. "I think my grandfather will still be alive then."

"Doesn't matter," Touma continued, finding the fantasy more and more appealing. "He can't make you go somewhere you don't want to at eighteen. It's the law."

"My mother's way older than that and she still does whatever he tells her to."

"Your mom should meet my mom." He opened his eyes to see Seiji glancing questioningly at him. His eyes looked so large up close. "Dad was drunk and tried to tell her what to do once, and she smacked him and then went to Australia."

Seiji's mouth opened a fraction in awe. "You've gone to Australia?"

Touma snickered. "Nah, I asked to stay here. I had things to do." Namely taking advantage of a scholarship and assisting with his father's research grant.

He fell silent in the ensuing pause and searched Seiji's face. The other boy looked both tense and exhausted, the heavy circles under his eyes seeming more pronounced in the harsh indoor light. Touma bit his lower lip and turned on his side so that he was fully facing the other boy. "Seiji," he began, and saw him tense at the serious tone, "when they take you to the hospital--"

The reaction was immediate. Seiji scowled and avoided Touma's gaze. "I'm not going to the hospital, I'm staying with you," he mumbled obstinately at the floor.

"Listen--" Touma started again and reached for Seiji's arm. But both boys froze as loud noises began to drift in from the door leading to the living room.

It sounded like footsteps and a lot of scuffling. They heard the metallic rattling of what was probably the front door, and then a very clear, somewhat harried, female voice: "Touma-kun?"

A few seconds of silence passed. Then more angry noises, this time from other adults that didn't sound like his mother.

If they resorted to contacting her, that meant they probably got the number off the directory and Seiji kept the house's phone number to himself. He almost admired the foresight, but his nerves were shot and he could feel Seiji's arm trembling under his hand.

A familiar, strong intonation joined the cacophony outside. "That's grandfather," Seiji whispered with real fear in his voice.

Touma tightened his grip on Seiji's arm, drawing the boy's attention back to him. "We can't stop them from coming in, Seiji," he quietly said.

The trembling got worse. Seiji's eyes shone bright when he met Touma's gaze. "I can still come over, right?" he asked, the tremor in his voice unmistakable. "When I'm better, after the surgery?"

_Seiji_. Touma gave him a small, sad smile. "After tonight, I don't think they'll let us see each other for a really long time."

What little restraint Seiji was clinging to seemed to shatter. There was no hindrance to the heaving sobs that began to shake his small frame. Tears followed, though he tried to stop them with his balled up fists, pressing them tight against his eyes while his mouth struggled to both speak and breathe through tiny, involuntary whimpers. When he spoke, it was in a broken voice that could barely fit between breaths. "I'm really sorry, Touma."

"Shh. Listen--" Touma drew him closer, one hand tightly grasping Seiji's arm and the other settling on the side of his face, cupping his jaw. Every cry, every desperate breath that the other boy took, Touma felt under his fingers. He spoke as evenly as he could despite the growing noise from outside. "You won't feel anything during the surgery, but it's going to be really painful afterwards. It'll be hard, and it'll really, really suck, but try walking after you wake up. Seiji, are you listening?" The other boy's sobbing didn't abate, but Touma could feel the brief nod. "They're going to make you take medicine that's going to make you feel worse, and they're going to taste really horrible, but make sure to take them all for me, okay? Don't spit them out like you do the fizzy drinks."

He felt Seiji nod again and start to say something, but he couldn't catch it. The door opened and people started pouring in.

Touma didn't need to see their expressions to know this looked really bad at first glance. Both boys were hauled to their feet, he by his mother and Seiji by his grandfather. The blond head was quickly buried behind the larger bodies of two other adults, both of whom looked very tired and very angry.

There was a policeman there who had Seiji's eyes, and he started yelling something about arrests and court orders. His gaze, such a clone of Seiji's cool violets, flashed angrily when he looked at Touma. For once, he was thankful that his mother was quick to smother him against the pleats of her skirt while she yelled back at the other people in the room.

Touma had never been in the middle of so many angry voices before. It was the first time he had ever really felt his own age.

He tried to tune out the accusations and the hurtful words, but the only other sound he wanted to hear tore at his chest. Seiji was crying so hard that he couldn't breathe. Vaguely, he heard Grandfather Date's voice say something about oxygen, and he heard a few people leave. Among the sounds that vanished were Seiji's.

It suddenly occurred to Touma that instead of blurting out those post-surgery instructions, maybe he should have told the boy this wasn't his fault -- that although he had been underhanded, Touma was the one who knew better and still let him stay. He pressed his face tighter against his mother's side, but the anchoring hands that shielded his head and shoulder began to push. "Touma-kun, I'll just talk to these people outside, all right? Stay here."

His nod went unheeded as his mother turned and furiously ushered out the only other two people in the room. Touma guessed they were probably Seiji's parents, his gaze lingering on the woman's long, gold-spun hair and the man's expressive, clear eyes.

There would be questions when she returned. Touma felt at a loss. What was he to say? He had finally found a friend in a boy his age and decided to take him home? Considering how angry Seiji's relatives had been, he'd be lucky if his parents weren't slapped with a kidnapping charge.

Suddenly, a fresh memory sliced through Touma's thoughts, and he found himself staring at the JA-37 Viggen still sitting on the mantelshelf.

_"Don't forget, okay?"_

He didn't know how long he sat slumped on the floor with his eyes fixed on the innocuous toy, but it felt far too soon for his mother to be coming back. She looked weary and harassed, much like she often did after she and Touma's father got into one of their many arguments. He resignedly watched as she stood in front of him, looking just as imposing as the other adults who left earlier.

"Touma--" she began, her voice hard. Touma didn't know why, but her face suddenly changed -- the anger vanished completely, replaced by an expression so tender, he found it hard to look her in the eyes.

"Oh, sweetheart," she whispered, the sympathetic note sounding as raw as Touma felt. She knelt in front of him and gathered him in her arms.

It was after Touma tried to take in a deep, anchoring breath that he realized he'd been crying.

* * *

"I apologize for my lack of manners. I haven't introduced myself," the blond boy with his hand extended to Touma said, "My name is Date Seiji. I look forward to fighting alongside you."

Touma shook his hand.

_We played tag when we were six. You helped wash my knee when I skinned it on the slide. I threw gummy bears at your face and you almost poked my eye out with popcorn. You said my favorite fizzy flavor tasted like your father's sock, but you drank it all, anyway._

_I broke the left wing of our fighter jet when I was cleaning the mantel, and I'm really, really sorry about that._

Touma smiled. "Hashiba Touma. Likewise."

Seiji politely returned his smile and released his hand.

He didn't remember, but that was all right.

This Seiji didn't have a weak grip and an open smile. His body wasn't frail and his stance was both confident and self-aware. He spoke his grandfather's words through lips that hinted at well-kept secrets, shielded and protected despite years of maltreatment and rigorous discipline.

Touma mourned the sickly little blond thing that had been his first and best friend, but now he had the rest of his life to get to know him all over again. Who knew? Maybe he'd still find the boy who thought it was kind of cool that Touma lived in a large house all by himself, with no parents, no rules, and no friends.

Fin.

* * *

Epilogue?

"I don't know what you're expecting, but the dojo isn't anything impressive."

"Just show me the damn thing already."

Touma wasn't really expecting anything in particular, but the place did feel a little underwhelming after years of hearing about the great Date clan and its infamous kendo dojo. It was a mile-long walk from the nearest highway, and the buildings were comprised of aged bamboo wood and clay. It made him wonder if the place even had indoor plumbing.

"Watch your step," Seiji warned as they came upon a large puddle of water at the base of the entryway. "Leave your shoes there. The dojo's just inside."

Touma had just straightened up from arranging his shoes at the genkan when he spotted Seiji hovering inside, his features uncertain.

"What is it?" Touma asked, though he briefly considered saying "Who died?" instead. Seiji looked so grave.

His friend shifted his weight on his feet, a clear sign he was uneasy. "Grandfather asked to meet you."

There was a questioning note in the way he said it, hinting at Seiji's own curiosity as to why his grandfather would want to meet Touma in particular. Touma felt a little blindsided -- he'd agreed to visit the dojo with Seiji under the condition that he wouldn't have to meet anyone in his immediate family, using general shyness, social ineptness, and shabby clothing as his trusty trio of handy excuses. He slowly exhaled. "Seiji..."

"I know," Seiji said with an apologetic look. "But it's just Grandfather, and he was very insistent when he heard I was bringing you along for the weekend."

"So he's here? Now?"

"At the beach house. We can go there after we're done here."

He felt Seiji's eyes on him as he stalled by taking his cap off and pretending to sort his hair. Well, he wasn't six anymore. And he wasn't afraid. If Grandfather Date wanted to take issue with something that happened over ten years ago, Touma could handle it now. Probably. If all else failed, he was a pretty fast runner. "Sure," he shrugged, hoping he sounded nonchalant enough. "What the hell, right?"

His show of bravado at least made Seiji smile. "Don't worry. I'm sure he'll like you."

Touma highly doubted that. He was about to follow Seiji farther into the house, when a nook off the side of the hallway caught his eye.

"Huh," he exclaimed, loud enough for Seiji to hear and walk back to where he was standing. "What's this?"

"Hm? Oh." Seiji stood beside him. "The Date Collection of Ancient Weapons and Armor. Except for the bottom row -- that's sort of mine. And personal."

"I see." Touma squatted on the ground and peered at the various objects on the bottom-most shelf. There weren't many items in there -- a gold medal, a piece of what could be an antique arrowhead, a few letters. He pointedly stared at the empty space in the middle and raised an eyebrow at his friend. "I think you missed a spot."

Seiji scratched his cheek and gave a brief, embarrassed laugh. "Grandfather told me that when I was six or seven, I was reserving that space for something 'really important,' but couldn't find it." His expression turned regretful. "I still can't remember what it was."

Touma hid the small smile that involuntarily curved his lips. "It's been years, though. Waste of space," he said as he stood and dusted his hands off on his torn jeans. "You should put a trophy there or something."

"Mm. Maybe." He knew Seiji enough to be certain that meant he wasn't planning to do anything of the sort any time soon. Seiji turned disinterestedly from the cabinet and resumed his walk down the hallway. "I'll remember it someday."

Touma snickered, his gaze lingering on the empty spot before he trailed after Seiji's steady footsteps farther into the Date dojo. "Just make sure I'm around when you finally do."

Fin.


End file.
